EURO 2008 INFO

If you stroll through the pantheon of Manchester United past names like Best, Law, Giggs, Cantona, Robson, Keane and Beckham, one uneasy truth begins slowly to reveal itself. Not one of them had any influence on a major international tournament.

The reasons vary. Denis Law, Ryan Giggs and George Best were fated to be born in football's relative backwaters of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland respectively. Bryan Robson was too often injured. Roy Keane chose to walk out when his destiny beckoned in the 2002 World Cup. David Beckham and Eric Cantona fell short of true greatness.

There are only three men who fulfilled themselves both at Old Trafford and internationally; Sir Bobby Charlton, Nobby Stiles and Peter Schmeichel, whose goalkeeping was pivotal in taking Denmark to the 1992 European Championship trophy.

This summer there should be a fourth. From Madrid to Manchester, they acknowledge that Cristiano Ronaldo, the shy boy with the country accent from an island closer to Africa than mainland Europe, is the best footballer on the planet. Should he light up the Euro 2008 as he did the Premier and Champions Leagues, the identity of the World Player of the Year will not be up for debate.

Since leaving Sporting Lisbon when he was 18, Ronaldo has known only two managers; short-tempered quick-thinking men who physically and mentally dominate their dressing-room - the shipbuilder's son from Govan and the man from the high plains of Brazil. He has achieved everything with one and now he may be on the point of achieving everything with the other. At 23, he has played in one European Championship final and a World Cup semi-final, and travelled further and faster than any member of Fabio Capello's England squad.

His relationship with Luiz Felipe Scolari, his national manager, is perhaps closer than that with Sir Alex Ferguson and was forged in even darker heat than in the aftermath of Wayne Rooney's dismissal in Gelsenkirchen. Portugal were in Moscow for a World Cup qualifier against Russia in 2005, when news came through that Ronaldo's father, Dinis, had died.

In Moments, a well-written account of his early life, Ronaldo described his meeting with Scolari. "He told me to go home. 'Never forget that family comes first, and only then comes football,' he said. I refused. At that point my relationship with Scolari began to strengthen; we both cried when he told me the story of how his own father died."

That book was filled with colour photographs of Ronaldo in various states of undress, marketing him as a symbol for both sexes, just as Beckham targeted the gay market. One of his first ads was for Pepe jeans that showed him on Barreiro beach in Portugal, wearing nothing but the product, sitting on an inflatable armchair with a bikini-clad model lying next to him on some straw. Beside them was an everyday beach accessory - a pack of wolves.

His abiding memory of the European Championship in 2004 was in the emotional cauldron of Lisbon; as Portugal prepared for the final against a rag-bag of ordinary but wonderfully-disciplined Greek footballers. Luis Figo, rather than Ronaldo, was the pivotal figure. This was supposedly his swansong, although when Portugal lost tears were shed indiscriminately throughout the dressing-room.